


Warm Heart, Wet Hands

by gloss



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Pre-Canon, why we fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 19:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20196871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Cassian's always had a reason to fight. Notes toward a biography, told in weapons used and their acquisition, as well as lives taken.





	Warm Heart, Wet Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/gifts).

> For the 300BPM flash challenge. The prompt was Ashtar Command's ["Deadman's Gun"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLpYu2EQxg) ([lyrics](https://genius.com/Ashtar-command-deadmans-gun-lyrics)); this is such a perfect Cassian song that it was hard at first to find more to say. ♥

When Cassian kills someone, a breath stops in his throat. 

*

In retrospect, each life he takes comes to represent the whole of the fight, everything it does and is capable of doing. Taken together, these deaths are nothing to brag about. All the same, they make him proud. He's done something, he's made a difference, even if that is merely to add to the sorrow in the world.

In the moment, however, each life is like no other, like nothing else: absurdly, shatteringly unique as the body jerks and splutters, spits and sags. 

*

At seven years old, Cassian uses a slingshot and carefully selected rocks.

When he's nine, his father gives him a knife to carry in his sleeve when he runs messages for their cell. The next year, after his father disappears in ISB custody and the cell vanishes, Cassian trades up for a larger, better knife. He is on a refugee transport then. That night, the woman he bartered the knife from tries to take it back. That's the first time someone else's blood runs over his hands. It glints in the steerage dark, just another, wetter shadow among all the others. She withdraws, cursing and gasping.

At eleven, on a new world but just as hungry as he's always been, Cassian picks pockets and runs numbers for a few different bookies. He keeps his knife in his belt now. At night, he practices drawing it and slashing it, drawing and stabbing, drawing and lunging.

Within a few months, his particularly vehement animosity toward stormtroopers draws the notice of a nascent resistance group. He's run wire across narrow alley exits, perfect for shoving troopers into, cutting the backs of their knees. When they land on their backs, grunting, a small child with fire in his heart finds it easy enough to drop onto their chests and slice the tender space between helmet and chest plate.

*

After a successful raid on a bounty hunter/collections agent who has been passing information to the ISB, their tiny group sorts through their target's bolthole.

Two members leave to pawn some of the loot and buy dinner. The dead man is sprawled over his sleeping platform. His blood was red at first, but now, an hour or so later, it is starting to darken. His face disappeared under blaster fire; it's a pulpy mass now.

Cassian slips the man's blaster out from his unresisting hand and tests its weight. He's ready for this, he decided a while back. A knife is well and good, should he come close enough to have to use it, but a blaster would increase his options markedly.

"Mine." He hefts the blaster as he makes his announcement. 

Across the room, Baro grunts over the contents of the dead man's safe.

"This is mine," Cassian says more loudly. 

"Funny joke," Baro replies. With difficulty, he stands up, dusting off his hands before holding one out. He is the nominal leader of their group, though his dedication is more to violence than it is to righteousness. "Hand it over."

"Mine." Cassian adjusts his grip on the barrel and crosses his arms. He never takes bounties from their raids. In the past fifteen months, he has asked for a bedroll and a share in the communal meal pot, and that's it. He deserves this.

He would make that argument to Baro, calmly and reasonably, but Baro's face is darkening and his good eye twitching.

"Brat, give it."

"No."

"Stupid little wretch, hand it over!"

Cassian tips up his chin. "This one's mine. You can have the rest."

"Oh, is that right? You're _letting_ me?"

Cassian shakes his head. Baro's bedmate Yaja approaches, looking confused. "What's going on?"

"This miserable little shit's helping himself to whatever the fuck he wants!"

Cassian shows her the blaster. "This is mine. That's all."

Yaja laughs, but the sound dwindles as she looks back and forth between them. "That thing's nearly as big as you are, tiny."

Cassian unlocks the safety. He asks as innocently as he can, "Is it?"

Bellowing, Baro lunges at him and Cassian ducks, rolls to the side. He resets the safety as he comes back upright. When Baro grabs him by the hair and yanks Cassian off the ground, Cassian kicks out, desperate to make contact, and bites at the air. His scalp feels like it's giving way, centimeter by centimeter, hair by hair, into Baro's dirty paw.

Yaja goes for the blaster. Her mouth is open, she's yelling, but Cassian doesn't hear anything. He sees the three of them like they're in a holo, frozen in time, and watches as he points the blaster at Baro's head.

Yaja stops. Baro drops him. Cassian bounces off the floor, the blaster shoots into the wall, spitting duracrete and plaster, and Cassian starts running again.

*

He's still hungry, but now he has two knives and a blaster, and he'll make the space port by dawn, sooner if this storm lets up. There's a great deal more to fight. He just has to catch his breath.


End file.
